Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli on Sunday attended the singing ceremony of two memorandums of understanding (MoUs) between the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) Association of Arab Universities (AAU) and Federation of Arab Scientific Research Councils (FASRC) aiming to expand the EKB’s services regionally.
The MoUs were signed Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Ayman Ashour, who doubles as Chairman of the EKB’s Board of Trustees, Secretary General of the AAU Amr Ezzat Salama, and FASRC Secretary General Abdelmajid Ben Amara.
The two MoUs are part of the continuous efforts to enhance the quality of education and scientific research, support innovation, and develop the use of modern knowledge platforms that provide access to high-level scientific and academic content covering various academic disciplines.
Minister Ashour explained that the MoUs aim to provide co-operation between the EKB and the two institutions in areas including learning support services, solutions, systems and tools, access and availability of digital content, scientific publishing services and systems, as well as workshops, specialised professional training, exchange of expertise and knowledge obtained through research and creation of databases, in addition to helping to raise the position of Egyptian universities in various international rankings.
Premier Madbouli also attended yesterday the signing of a number of contracts to internationalise the services of the Egyptian Knowledge Bank.
The contracts were signed between the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and a group of international publishers.
They will allow the EKB to offer these publishers’ services to entities, bodies and universities outside Egypt.
The event also featured the announcement by the ministry the launch of the Egyptian Knowledge Index, in co-operation with the international publisher Elsevier.
The Index offers a pioneering analytical tool aimed at assessing research performance in Egypt in a comprehensive and accurate manner that for the first time includes all Egyptian research outputs published both locally and internationally.
It will also evaluate scientific research and periodicals published in Arabic for the first time, with the same international standards and criteria, which supports research in the fields of humanities and social sciences.
Madbouli had received a delegation from UNESCO and UNICEF to review aspects of co-operation in support of the educational, academic and research process.
As for the Egyptian Knowledge Index, Minister Ashour said it represents a major step towards building a strong and sustainable research system in Egypt.
For her part, Acting President of the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology and EKB General Supervisor, Gena el-Feqqui pointed out that UNESCO and UNICEF had issued a report on the bank under “The Egyptian Knowledge Bank Experience … A case study of Egypt’s national digital learning platform”.
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